Mission: The Valley Women’s Club is dedicated to community action, awareness and leadership in environmental, educational, social, and political concerns that affect the health and welfare of the San Lorenzo Valley and our community.
Mission: The Valley Women’s Club is dedicated to community action, awareness and leadership in environmental, educational, social, and political concerns that affect the health and welfare of the San Lorenzo Valley and our community.
Community Connection CommitteeThe Community Connection Committee sponsors and participates in selected community events and provides liaison with other SLV organizations and with government officials. Events Annual Disaster Preparedness Fair Liaison Education/Cabrillo: Donna Ziel Community Connections news Winter 2009–2010 “Club Waikiki” to help Redwood Mountain Faire
In order to help cover the start-up costs for the Faire, there will be a super fun event on February 11th! Escape from winter! Take your Valentine on a time trip to tropical Club Waikiki, where it’s 1949 and things are swinging! Club Waikiki (Scopazzi’s in Boulder Creek) is hosting this fantasy flight on Thursday, February 11th, from 6:30 to 9 PM. Your trip includes Hawaiian buffet, raffle and silent auction, Hula and Swing dancing to the music of “Island Breeze.” No-host bar. Be sure to pack your favorite vintage 40’s outfit. Raffle and Silent Auction items are fantastic, including beautiful Annie Glass and a magnificent Kala Ukulele. “Airfare” is $42 per person prior to departure, $50 at the door. Tickets are available at Coldwell-Banker Realtors in Boulder Creek and your travel agent there is Ms.Spehar. To RSVP or for more information, phone 338-4300 to leave a message. Proceeds from this Fundraiser will be used toward the revival of the Redwood Mountain Faire. Come and enjoy the Aloha spirit and leave winter behind for a while…
The Boulder Creek Recreation and Park District Board of Directors are proud to announce their participation in Proposition 84, the Statewide Park Development and Community Revitalization Program of 2008, grant application process. In 2006, voters passed Prop. 84 which will provide $368 million to underserved communities. The Boulder Creek Recreation and Park District is seeking $5,000,000 for the purchase of land in the town core of Boulder Creek and to develop a new community center and park. Public input is key to the grant application and two planning workshops have been planned. The first meeting is scheduled for Saturday, January 23, 2010, from 5:30-7:00 p.m at the Boulder Creek Recreation and Park District offices (13333 Middleton Drive Boulder Creek). Pizza and childcare will be provided. On Saturday, January 30, a Planning Workshop will be held from 9:00 a.m.-noon, also at the Park District offices. The public is strongly encouraged to participate. For more information, contact Christina Horvat, District Manager (831)338-4144 or Eric Hammer, Committee Chair (831)239-8895.
The Ultimate SLV Event is on June 5, 2010, at Roaring Camp With the hope of bringing back the wonderful feeling that the Redwood Mountains Fine Arts & Crafts Faire and Music Festival brought to several generations of SLV folks, year after year for 18 years, a determined group of people led by Julie Hendriks, have put together a great plan, and the VWC Board is excited to announce that a Redwood Mountain Faire Revival will be held next June 5th at Roaring Camp!! Julie explained that Roaring Camp’s CEO, Georgiana Clark*, offered Roaring Camp as a venue in order to reach out and support the community. Having the Faire there will alleviate the necessity of busing thousands of people to & from parking, among other difficulties the original Faire faced at Highlands Park. The RMF Revival is envisioned as the ideal family event, with booths of exclusively local artists and crafters and food vendors, and featuring primarily local musicians on two stages. An integral piece of the event will be enlisting the help of local nonprofit organizations that will then share in the proceeds.
(*Georgiana’s husband F. Norman Clark, who tragically died of pneumonia in 1985, had the dream of preserving a piece of the SLV’s 1880’s railroad history, when they began building and operating the railroad in Felton in 1963, to the delight of thousands of visitors a year from around the world. Check out the history at www.roaringcamp.com)
Ballot Measure to Protect State Parks & Conserve Wildlife In early November, a group started work on gaining support for a statewide ballot measure, called the “California State Parks and Wildlife Conservation Trust Fund Act of 2010,” which would create a source of funding to protect all 278 state parks and conserve California wildlife. The ballot measure would establish a Trust Fund that could only be spent on State Parks, urban river parkways, wildlife, natural lands and ocean conservation programs. Funding for the Trust Fund would come from an $18 annual surcharge on all California vehicles. In exchange for the surcharge, Californians would receive free, year-round admission to all state parks. Out-of-state vehicles would continue to pay full entrance fees at parks. Right now the committee is looking at the feasibility of the ballot measure. If it decides to try to qualify it for the ballot, the measure would appear on the November, 2010 ballot. Twice in the past two years, State Parks were on the brink of being shut down. Both times, last minute budget reprieves kept them open. But nearly 60 state parks will be shut down part-time or their hours of operation reduced because of this year’s budget cuts, and more park closure proposals and budget cuts are expected next year. “California State Parks are in peril because of chronic under funding,” said Elizabeth Goldstein, President of the California State Parks Foundation. “Our State Parks were once considered the best in the nation, and now they’re falling apart and threatened with closure because they have no reliable source of funding.This parks measure would create a dedicated funding source to prevent park closures, eliminate a backlog of more than a billion dollars in repairs and properly maintain parks and other natural resources for our children and grandchildren to enjoy.” Early supporters of the proposed ballot measure include California State Parks Foundation, The Nature Conservancy and Save the Redwoods League. The next step is gathering enough signatures in the coming months to get the measure on the November, 2010 ballot, and the VWC Environmental Committee will be staffing tables by local markets to collect signatures. You are urged to help. Contact EC Chair, Nancy Macy, to volunteer (338-6578 or nbbm@cruzio.com).
It’s that time of year when you will soon be bombarded by all those good causes who need donations more than ever! Well, as you plan your holiday giving this year, please remember to think close to home too, to think about those in your communities who need help more than ever before. This year the annual Good Times fund raiser is featuring the 5 Family Resource Centers in Santa Cruz County. In this time of economic crisis and unemployment, family resource centers are needed more than ever, as need for services is up and funding from government and others is being reduced. So please join me in supporting Mountain Community Resources this year. The David and Lucille Packard Foundation will match whatever is raised which is a terrific opportunity to double your money! Also watch for the articles in the Good Times as there will be features on all 5 centers. For more information about the annual Good Times fund raiser, click here.
You will love this! What a fun thing to do for holiday gifts, and a great way to support local artists. “The Gift of Art” November 25 – December 23, 2009 Local artists were invited to “think gift-minded” for the holidays, and turn the Ben Lomond gallery into a big artful gift shop. You will find a diverse selection of handcrafted gifts for that special someone! Choose from jewelry, textiles (wearable art), ceramics, wood, glass, baskets, paintings, cards, ornaments and more! This show is sponsored in part by a grant from the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County. Gallery Hours are Wednesday - Sunday, 12 - 6 p.m., and admission is free.
Scopazzi’s Great Food, Live Music, Auction, and Angel Awards Valley Churches will be holding one of the “don’t miss” events of this holiday season on December 3rd at Scopazzi’s in Boulder Creek. Billed as a “Delectable Social Event,” the fundraiser will feature live music as well as a live auction by Bob Slawinski. VCUM “Angel Awards” will be presented that night recognizing extraordinary volunteers in our community. Proceeds from the event will be used to fund the VCUM Emergency Food Pantry and annual holiday projects, which are facing significant increases in demand.
Fire, Floods and Earthquakes in the San Lorenzo Valley As part of the SLV Museum’s Historical Talk Series, Pat Jocius, Retired Emergency Services Manager for the City of San Mateo Fire Department, recently shared a pictorial history called, “Fire, Floods and Earthquakes in the San Lorenzo Valley,” at the Highland Parks Senior Center. The presentation included incredible photographs of some of the devastating events that have changed the face of the San Lorenzo Valley over the last 100 years. According to museum personnel, many of the disaster photos had never before been shown in a public forum. State Farm Agent Jim Flynn and the Valley Women’s Club sponsored the lecture. Check the Museum’s website for future lectures and special events. www.slvmuseum.com
Did you know that the new “511 Traveler Information System” is in place for the greater San Francisco Bay Area (minus 19thAve.), AND in Northern California (minus Pacheco Pass), Sacramento, San Joaquin Valley, Eastern Sierra, Southern California (Los Angeles, Orange County, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino County) and San Diego regions? BUT there is currently a gap in the Central Coast of California! San Luis Obispo County is scheduled to launch their 511 system in March, 2010. However, Santa Cruz County has not yet launched its 511 program. So you may wonder about the blue static 511 mini billboards affixed to existing highway changeable message signs (CMS) in Santa Cruz County…. It was decided to leave these messages in Santa Cruz County because San Francisco 511 can be reached when calling from most locations in Santa Cruz County; some Highway 17 roadway conditions are available through the 511 Bay Area number and, Santa Cruz County highways serve interregional traffic and approximately 25,000 people commute north of Santa Cruz County daily. Santa Cruz County is still waiting for approval for funding to develop its 511 program, but will leave the signs in place to assist those travelling north (and later, south through San Luis Obispo County). The newly installed equipment actually collects real-time information about the speed of traffic along the highway. This information (including estimated delays) is then made available to the public via the 511 phone number, website, customized alerts and the changeable roadside message signs. According to Mr. Roadshow (SJ Mercury News), information is not quite flowing smoothly through the system yet! It would be helpful if our legislator, Anna Eshoo, heard from us as to the importance of this service on our local highways. Her local contact number is 335-2020, so give her a call! Landscape funding has been approved for the Highway 1/17 merge lanes project. Bids will be taken beginning 11/16. You may be interested to know that trees and other vegetation were removed after due consideration as the Highway 1/17 merge lane project proceeded. For example, trees were removed only after careful study determined when birds were nesting and then the trees were removed prior to nesting, so that eggs and chicks would not be destroyed in the process. Now, trees and other vegetation will be planted, with special focus on native species. Note: In case you didn’t know, our 5th District Supervisor, Mark Stone, is the Board of Supervisor’s Representative to the Transportation Commission, which makes major decisions about transportation issues in the County (like widening Hwy 1, or purchasing the railroad that travels down the coast). Our VWC Board Member, Donna Ziel, is Mark’s alternate on the Commission, so you can look forward to regular updates on transportation issues in upcoming Newsletters from Donna.
More than sixty residents met with Library Director Teresa Landers on October 28 in a town hall meeting about the Felton Library. Attendees were articulate and passionate in their vision for library service in the San Lorenzo Valley, their assessment of both strengths and weaknesses of the current branch and Library system, and their views regarding both threats and opportunities facing libraries in Santa Cruz County in the future. The town hall was just one of more than ten such events contributing to the Library’s strategic planning process. Additional meetings at other branches and with specific user groups, as well as compilation of demographic and other statistics, will shape the Library system’s 3-5 year strategic plan, due for completion in Spring 2010. For access to reports on the various meetings, go to www.santacruzpl.org/future (information on the Felton meeting is also available at www.feltonlibraryfriends.org). The most frequent question Felton Library Friends has been asked recently concerns construction plans for the Scotts Valley and Capitola branches, at a time when the Library system has cut staff, hours, and collections due to decreased revenues. A very brief explanation of this complicated situation is that for each of the three areas in Santa Cruz County that successfully applied for redevelopment funds many years ago, a promise to build a new branch library was a requirement of RDA approval. Construction of the Live Oak branch, completed in 2006, and future branches in Scotts Valley and Capitola, does not draw from the Library’s annual operating budget, which at this time is severely reduced. As no redevelopment authority exists in the San Lorenzo Valley, construction of a new Felton branch must be accomplished with another sources of funds, which is yet to be identified.
On October 24th, the San Lorenzo Valley Museum threw a party to celebrate the opening of a new exhibit called, “Big Trees to Surfboards—The Redwood Connection.” The exhibit traces the origin of the lumber used to make the 15-foot surfboards used by 3 Hawaiian princes in Santa Cruz in 1885 to a redwood grove in the San Lorenzo Valley. The royal teenagers were visiting Santa Cruz on a summer break and some historians think that sultry afternoon was the first documented instance of riding waves on boards in California, and possibly even the first on the U.S. mainland. Of more local interest, however, is the belief that the lumber used to make those first boards came from the Grover Brothers lumber mill on land where the Brookdale Lodge now sits. Local surfer and author Tom Hickenbottom, on hand at the museum bash to sign his book, “Surfing in Santa Cruz,” said, “That this San Lorenzo Valley redwood played such an important role in the development of early surfing—well, it’s just fascinating.” The exhibit will run through April of next year. The Museum is open to the public on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, from 12 noon to 4 p.m. (or by appointment—call 831-338-8382) www.slvmuseum.com
Some wonderful activities WILL be taking place on weekends over the winter months at Quail Hollow Park, which is great news because the park was threatened with closure earlier this year. Quail Hollow is open to the public 7 days a week for hiking, horseback riding, birding, and other outdoor pursuits. On weekends, the interpretive center is open from 9-5. Holiday Wreath Making Sunday, December 6 from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Come to Quail Hollow Ranch and join Master Gardener Bonnie Pond for an afternoon of wreath making. Bring pine or fir boughs and wire, we’ll supply the decorations. A donation of $3.00 is asked to cover materials. Class attendance is limited to 12. To sign up, call 831-335-9348 Saturdays and Sundays, or 454-7926 Wednesday-Friday. Old Time Games Sunday, December 13 from 1 1:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Put aside the electronic games of today and come to Quail Hollow Ranch for an afternoon of fun, the old-fashioned way. Learn how to play games from the Ohlone and early American traditions including staves, jacks, pick-up sticks and more. Bring along a playful attitude. Open to anyone ages 5 and up. For further information on Quail Hollow activities, email Anne Williams at: jimanne@cruzio.com. Or visit their website.
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Visit the Mountain Arts Center in Ben Lomond!
Surfing Exhibit at the SLV Museum